Syria, Israel Reportedly Holding Talks In U.s.

December 31, 1994|By New York Times News Service.

WASHINGTON — Syria and Israel have held private, high-level peace negotiations under U.S. sponsorship in Washington for the last six months in an effort to break their deadlock, senior U.S. and Middle East officials said Friday.

The face-to-face talks shifted to an even higher level last week, when the army chiefs of staff of both countries met for the first time in publicly announced meetings in Washington capped by a private, 40-minute session at the White House with President Clinton. They are Lt. Gen. Ehud Barak of Israel and Maj. Gen. Hikmat Shihabi of Syria.

At that meeting, Clinton spoke of the importance he attached to their negotiations, but also of his concern that time for a peace settlement was running out, officials said. "He said now was the time to really try to see whether there was a possibility of reaching understandings on security arrangements," one participant recalled.

Although the two sides have failed so far to narrow their differences on the crucial issue of how they intend to guarantee each other's security, they have used the private talks to explain their positions in detail, air their disagreements and make progress on other issues like the timing of an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights and the establishment of relations between the two countries.

Until early this year, Syrian and Israeli delegations had met in large, formal meetings at the State Department as part of a multitrack Middle East peace effort that began in Madrid in late 1992.

The Arabs suspended those negotiations in February to protest the killing of 29 Palestinians by a Jewish settler at a mosque in the town of Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

But during a trip to the Middle East last May, Secretary of State Warren Christopher proposed that the U.S. sponsor quiet meetings that would bring together Itamar Rabinovich, Israel's ambassador to Washington and its chief negotiator, and Walid al-Moualem, Syria's ambassador to Washington and the deputy head of its negotiating team.

Syria and Israel accepted. Since then, the two men have held about two dozen sessions with the chief U.S. negotiators, Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk, meeting as often as three times a week.

They have met in the State Department-three times with the participation of Christopher-and in private settings like the living room of the Ross' home in a Washington suburb.

Senior administration officials said the talks could not be compared with the secret negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian officials in Norway that led to the ground-breaking Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement in September 1993.

"It ain't Oslo II," one senior administration official said. "One difference is that Oslo was completely secret until an agreement was reached. Another is that the sense of urgency that was evident in the PLO's negotiations with Israel is not evident here."

But all sides are convinced that the small, unpublicized meetings are the most effective forum for exchanging ideas and supplementing trips to the region by Christopher and his negotiating.

Still, Israel and Syria remain far apart on crucial points. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel has agreed to a pullback on the Golan Heights, but he will not define the extent of the withdrawal until he is satisfied that Syria has met other conditions like the normalization of relations with Israel, concrete security arrangements and agreement on a phased withdrawal.

The publicly held position of Syria's president, Hafez Assad, is that there can be no diplomatic relations until Israel withdraws completely from the strategic plateau, which it has occupied since 1967 and formally annexed in 1981.

Officials familiar with the negotiations said Friday that the existence of the private channel helped diplomats reach two small but important conceptual breakthroughs during Clinton's meeting with Assad in Damascus in November.

During Clinton's visit, Assad agreed to extend the timing for a withdrawal from a year to 18 months-not nearly enough of a concession for the Israelis, but a concrete sign that the issue was negotiable, according to officials familiar with the meeting.

Thus far, the Israelis have suggested a willingness to pull back their troops a short distance over a nine-month period, then take three more years to complete the withdrawal.

Perhaps more important, Assad also indicated during that meeting that he might be willing to consider opening some form of diplomatic relations after the first phase of Israel's withdrawal, the officials said.

From the occupied West Bank, meanwhile, The Associated Press reported that a continuing protest against the expansion of a Jewish settlement turned violent Friday.

As many as 11 Palestinians, one Israeli peace activist and six Israeli soldiers were injured during exchanges of tear gas and rocks, according to the army and Palestinian medical workers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The clash occurred on the ninth day of protests over plans by the Jewish settlement of Efrat to expand onto land claimed by the Palestinian village of Al-Khader.

Police detained about 25 protesters, most of them Israeli activists opposed to the construction of a new Jewish neighborhood on the land, 10 miles south of Jerusalem.